Angus Ma(r)tin
Father and Musician in Sausalito, California
Angus Ma(r)tin
Father and Musician in Sausalito, California
I explain my particular character in this way: My bottom half is French & my top half is Scottish, which makes for an interesting marriage. My grandmother was of Ulster-Scot extraction, & a bit of an uppercrust elitist-type. She was also, incidentally, a music critic for the Hearst rags. Anyway, she was of the opinion that guitars & accordions weren't 'real instruments' like the piano, say. or the bagpipes, which she would have bought me in a minute! She used to get me 'Black Watch' records for xmas.
Q: What is a musician?
A: A budding comedian.
Anyway, about moi/me/yo/io the cosmopolitan wonder of the blooming accordion renaissance! But to banish stilty polka from the minds of men! If it doesn't swing, it don't mean a thing, don't you know that yet Mr. Scardy-square-pants?
I have long contended that if Latinos can call themselves a race (based on shared language and catholic background) then musicians, surely can be thought of as a 'race' of people. Our language is immensely varied, but we all share a very common experience, which comes when you take on the craft of 'music-making' & go out in public & demonstate your art before strangers &/or peers. Takes a particularly stubborn person to subject themselves to such a fraught artistic risk over & over again, & learn to love it.
It really helps knowing that the general public has very little ear for music anyway! 'Fake it till you make it' is my particular creed & it has got me far. Once convinced of the general public's indifference to &/or inability to be a sound judge of music, the musician (that proud race!) is free to practice his or her art in complete tranquility, which in the long-run benefits the art of music, because no great music was ever made which did not involve risks, going out on a limb, pushing further, going 'out there'.
"Hey kid, the manager wants a word with you."
Music is, actually, a mysterious and magical thing, much more-so than brain-surgery, say, or Hollywood moon-landings or even Hearst's yellow journalism, not to mention the sexual-complexes of the manegerial class... And those of us who haltingly speak this language --this multi-faceted, human subjective, emotional-intellectual, abstract-declamative language, are not to be dismissed nor lionized nor demonized nor over-sexualized, but understood. And paid at the end of the night...